Four Subject Databases to Start With

Databases are often necessary complements to HOLLIS. These special search tools--organized around an academic discipline (like anthropology or literature), an area of the world (like Africa or the U.S.), or a particular information type (statistics or newspapers, for example) -- give you consistent and deep (rather than scattered) access to a body of knowledge.

You can think of library databases as premium online content--most of it is not accessible to you freely from Google (or Google Scholar) and it's only available to you because of your association with Harvard, which pays subscription fees on your behalf.

The contents of any library database are never random or accidental: the material you find collected and made searchable there is chosen for inclusion by experts, and designed with the needs of scholars and researchers in mind.

Databases are like lenses: they change what you see and how you see it -- and they offer you easy and efficient ways to bring your questions into sharper focus.

 Criminal Justice Abstracts:

Strategy: zoom in on details that another database, like HOLLIS might be obscuring.

Homeland Security Digital Library

Strategy: search across a database of Congressional, federal agency, think tank, advocacy and policy center reports and papers.Most of these don't end up published in academic journals bu they still shape or influence discussion and debate.

Social Science Premium Collection(ProQuest platform)

Strategy: check the social sciences literature broadly; then narrow and zoom in on a specific field, angle, or methodology.

Academic Search Premier

Strategy: while multidisciplinary, like HOLLIS, ASP is smaller in size and narrower in coverage.It's a good next step, if you've searched HOLLIS and gotten too many results or results that seem diffuse and difficult to work with.